Thursday, December 7, 2017

Isn't it ironic?

Or a coincidence? I don't really know. Alanis Morissette has forever made me paranoid of my word choice... 

Anyway...
There is an inmate that I've been working with off and on for the last five years. I basically tell people that he's Kanye West, if Kanye West had no money. Paranoid, egocentric, loquacious, philosophical, and kind of a lot crazy. He believes that he's falsely imprisoned and being held by "Headquarters" in order to censor him and keep him from exposing their malicious ways. Let's just go ahead and call him Kanye. So Kanye isn't in my unit anymore, but when he sees me he makes a point to check on me. He's concerned that I'm susceptible to danger from "Headquarters" because of all the information that he's provided to the FBI. He considers me an ally and as such, he worries. So he will come up to me and very quietly, but also conspiratorily, ask "Are you okay? But are you really okay?" And I assure him that I am and then we can move on. That's the back story. 

So I was walking across the yard with my captain the other day, when Kanye asked to speak with me. He walks over, looks around, and then furtively showed me the magazine in his hand. Side note; remember that many people at my prison show off their genitals, so I was a bit hesitant But alas, it was not a picture of a penis. Instead it was some propaganda magazine talking all about how the government is planning to insert microchips in people. And it was a legit publication that someone sent this man. Seriously?! How do you argue with randomly receiving a magazine warning you that the government has you under surveillance? 

It reminded me of a woman that I worked with at the women's facility. She was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder but also had psychosis, and she was convinced that she was pregnant. She claimed that the spirit of her (living) boyfriend visited her at night and impregnated her via radio waves. No amount of reality testing could convince her otherwise, and she interpreted any somatic experience as further proof of her pregnancy (and not a by product of state food.) It didn't help that I was also pregnant at the time. However, I was making some headway and she was starting to accept that maybe she would not be delivering her radio baby in the near future. So imagine my surprise when she excitedly told me that she had begun making breastmilk! I wracked my brain trying to figure out an alternative explanation for what she was explaining. Sweat? Condensation? What could possibly have happened to make her think that she was lactating? Well, after a few days I mentioned it to my supervisor. He wasn't surprised at all, since she was on a pretty common antipsychotic that has a very uncommon side effect of MAKING PEOPLE LACTATE. So sonofabitch. All that work to convince her she's not pregnant and then she starts leaking all over her damn shirt like the rest of us. 

No comments:

Post a Comment